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Podcast: New Books in Buddhist Studies
Episode: Jeff Wilson, “Dixie Dharma: Inside a Buddhist Temple in the American South” (UNC Press, 2012)
Description: Americanists have long employed a trope of regionalism to better understand American religions, beliefs, and practices. As many of us know, either by academic study or, more often, personal experience, the United States feels different in New England as compared to the Midwest, the West Coast, or the Deep South. Regional variations on culture play an important role in shaping our identities and informing our religious practices.
Scholars of American Buddhism, however, have been slow to recognize the importance of this trope in how they study Buddhism in the United States. In his new book, Dixie Dharma...